Looking for new anti-virus, firewall, internet security software, and I am seeing OEM on software that is half the price of the regular software. Does this mean no book, and no box, are the features the same and is there any drawbacks?

Also, how much of this stuff is necessary? Anti-virus, firewall, internet security suite. I don't have a problem with spam.

I like the Mcafee anti-virus, and don't particularly like the Norton. I have heard Panda mentioned as well.

Microsft windows is flaky enough without inserting any kiond of driver level intercepts into it, so the less you run on the PC the better. It slows it down and screws it up.

Attacks come in 5 forms.

- denial of service attacks. Ther isn't much you can do if someone floods your internet cahnnel with data that tyou simply drop, except get a bigger channel.

- direct attacks on your PC. The simple solution is to buy a hardware router with either firewall or network address translation options, or both. On broadband thats less than $50 and it takes a huge amount of processing power off the PC and onto a dedicated box that does it a 1000 times better.

- viruses in e-mail attachents. Here you do need Norton or Macafee. Install them and keep them up to date. I've got Norton, and I haven't caught an e-mail vrus since installing it a couple of years ago. Also try NOT to run Outlook express. Its a prime target and a dreadful piece of excrement. For peculiar reasons I run Qualcomm's Eudora.

- web browed nasties. Once again, ditch Internet Explorer and download another browser. I use Netsape 7.2. The odd site falls over with it - I use IE for those.

- spam. Use an ISP for youir mail that has decent filters. And accepts spamcop and other blacklists. Doing this has reduced my spam from about 10 a day to about 5 a week. As soon as s new site opens up it gets blacklisted and I only ever get the first e-mail through. Also block any e-mail from MSN, Yahoo and AOL except those that belong to known people. Encourage your freinds to not use micky-mouse ISP's as well..

- never publish your e-mail address eccept to known contacts: Even these will get spammed somehow. My e-mail address for here has got tacked onto a few lists - not that many - but some. It's used entirely for RCgroups and one or two e-mails to vendors. But its known.

Doing all that means I am essentially virus free, spam is down to manageable levels, and no one can hack into my PC throiugh my ageing router.

Popups and stuff is controllable via oher plugins, but frankly, if I end up on a site that starts popping up windows, I close down that site and rerboot the PC after a full virus scan, and never ever go back there. I hate popups, and I refuse to use sites that clutter you up with them

Likewise when installing 'free' software choose the minimal options with as little as you need to get the job done. All this 'yes I want to connect every 5 minutes to suckerbargains.com' stuff - unclick it NOW.

Its like gardening. Sometimes it gets so overgrown that the only thing to do is pull all the good stuff out, and start again, otherwise regular weeding will keep the rubbish down.

I use Norton corporate, a free pop-up blocker called lavasoft and a router and I never have any problems. I"m also running the rather fiendish Windows ME which is the worlds worst operating system ever. Vintage is right though, try to keep your computer uncluttered, use a router and just be smart about the websites you visit.

Does this mean no book, and no box, are the features the same and is there any drawbacks?

No book, no box. Same features. OEM products are not meant to be sold direct to end users, but it is hard for the S/W maker to control, so it ends up on the gray market. Some is bootleg from China. A lot of OEM disks are sold on eBay and at flea markets for 1/3 the normal retail price.

I have Panda and it works fine. I also use EZTrust. I gave up on Mcafee a couple years ago -- caused too many wierd PC problems on the office PC.

My best recommendation is to get something installed NOW. Turn on auto-updates; the virus dictionaries are updated daily.

I recommend Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security Suite 2005. We use it at work. We have a choice of testing/using most anything we want, since we get NFR and OEM CD's from a lot of vendors hawking their stuff to us routinely.
Of all the packages mentioned, and a couple that aren't mentioned, this one wins for us. I've been personally using Trend Micro's products for about ten years, and I find them to be consistently the best and most trouble-free. 2005 works well, and it has all the needed firewall/spam/filtering features and virus/spyware protection you'll need, all in one package.
It may not be the absolute very best at all it's tasks (no multifunction integrated product ever is), but it has a very strong set of features overall, the antivirus module being the strongest, IMHO. I still use Spybot and Adaware to check for spyware, although the TM product seems to keep it to a minimum.